Apple announces iPad AIR, 20% thinner, 28% lighter and has 43% smaller :

Apple has taken design cues from iPad mini and revamped the larger format tablet to make it thinner and lighter, and named it iPad Air. The new iPads have a number of small internal improvements which were earlier seen in the recently launched iPhone 5S.  At an event in California US, on Tuesday, the company launched its new crop of products, including the two new iPads and Macbook Pro laptops, while also announcing the availability of its latest operating system OSX Mavericks as a free download.   iPad Air is thinner and lighter than prior versions, and features a smaller bezel, which shrinks the footprint of the tablet down without compromising on screen size. Apple says it's 20 percent thinner at only 7.5mm thick, and weighs just 1.0 pound (28 percent less than the previous iPad). The screen remains the same; it's a 9.7-inch Retina Display with 2048 x 1536 pixel resolutions    The iPad Air features the 64-bit A7 processor and M7 motion coprocessor found in the iPhone 5S, which Apple says is 8 times faster and has 72 times better graphics performance than the old processor. It also has a 5-megapixel iSight camera and FaceTime HD front-facing camera and 10 hour battery life. Apple says the iPad Air has twice the data transfer rate on Wi-Fi thanks to new MIMO  802.11n support, but it doesn't support 802.11ac. The iPad Air will be available in silver and white and space grey and black color options starting at $499 in dozens of countries on November 1st. An LTE version will be available starting at $629. Apple is also keeping the geriatric iPad 2 in the lineup for $399. All of the new iPads will be shipping with iOS 7.